Bell Laboratories

American industrial research laboratory created by AT&T in 1925 — which invented the transistor, the laser, the solar cell, Unix, C, and information theory — making it the most productive research laboratory in the history of technology.

Produced more foundational technology than any other research institution in history — the transistor (1947), information theory (Shannon 1948), the laser (1960), Unix (1969), C programming language (1972), fiber optics development — by creating an environment where the world's best scientists could work on problems that were both commercially relevant and scientifically fundamental.